REPLAY： When Christians Don’t Care, Society Suffers ｜ Guest： Andrew T. Walker
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Summary
Andrew Walker is a Christian ethics professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also the managing editor of World Opinions and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Andrew is also an associate dean at the School of Theology at the SDSU and a contributing editor at World Magazine.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Hope everyone is having a great day, a great week so far.
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Today I am talking to Andrew Walker. He is a Christian ethics professor. He also worked
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at World Magazine where I also write. He is an associate dean at the School of Theology at the
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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as well. And he has so much wisdom when it comes to Christian
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ethics and how Christians should be engaging with the culture and with the political realm.
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And so he's going to tell us today, how do we balance not trusting too much in politics and
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putting our hope too much in politics while also realizing it's an important world for us to
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engage in and for us to understand. So without further ado, here is my friend, Andrew T. Walker.
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Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. For those who may not know, can you tell us who you are and
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what you do? Sure. My name is Andrew Walker, and I'm a professor of Christian ethics at the Southern
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Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and then also serve as managing editor of the new
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project of World Opinions, who is led by Dr. Albert Muller, who's the president of my institution.
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And then I also serve as a fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center based in Washington, D.C.
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as well. But I currently call Louisville, Kentucky home, and I'm very privileged to do what I get to do
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for my calling, which is to write and teach pastors and to train up individuals in the moral witness of
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the Christian faith. And how have you become a public voice on the things that you talk about?
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You're a professor, so that obviously puts you in front of an audience, but now you have a pretty
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large audience. So how did you come into this world of political and cultural public commentary?
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That's a good question. I would say it's almost a result of there just being very few people willing
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to step into the arena. You know, Ali, I know you know this, when you hear the statistics about
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millennials and kind of the bad state of their biblical theological literacy and their willingness
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to step into the arena, what that ends up doing is creating a smaller number of people who are willing
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to potentially burn down their reputation and their credibility to say what needs to be said.
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And so really, I don't know. It's really the fact that I'm overly that gifted. It could be the fact
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that I'm perhaps bravely or naively prepared to enter into the arena and to say things that I think need
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to be said. And that's not just because I want to be correct and right, but because as Christians,
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we believe that what is right is ultimately for our good. And so what we are talking about in the
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public square, it's not mere sectarian truths. This is not about us being vindicated. Ultimately,
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Christ is the one who vindicates. But if we love our neighbor, one of the very practical ways we're going
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to love our neighbor is to say what is true for our neighbor and what is true about our society as
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well. And I have a few questions within your answer or from your answer that I want to ask. But first,
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I want to back up a little bit. How would you summarize Christian ethics? What is it that you
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teach as a professor? Sure. That's a good question. I would say Christian ethics is a branch of moral
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theology. And it's effectively, sometimes I like to call it applied Christology, because what we're trying
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to do is live a life patterned after Jesus Christ and the revelation of Jesus Christ. So obviously that
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means that's going to impact our day-to-day conduct and interactions with the world. So we want to model
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and pattern our life after the person of Christ. But then also we understand that Christian ethics is
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bigger than just pure imitation. And I'm not trying to downplay the significance of imitation.
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But when we look at passages of scripture, like in John chapter 1 and Colossians chapter 1,
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what we understand is that Christ is at the center of the universe. In fact, in the Greek,
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he is referred to as the Logos, which means he is the divine cosmic ordering principle of the universe.
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So that means that implicates every single thing about how we see the world. So Christian ethics
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is really an issue of Christian worldview. So how am I called to relate to my world, to my role as a
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citizen, to my role as a husband and a father in light of the revelation of Christ that we get from
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scripture? And for those who say, you know, Christians really don't need to be messing around
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with these culture wars. We don't need to be so caught up in politics. I think evangelicals in
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particular are sometimes accused of idolizing politics, of getting too caught up in these
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political and culture wars. How do we as Christians balance that? We obviously don't want to put our
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trust in politicians or our hope in politicians or even in any kind of political future while
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realizing, as you said, we do have an obligation to our neighbor. And one of the ways, one of the
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ways we can love our neighbor is not only speaking truth, but also by participating in the political
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process that we are free to participate in in the United States. We say on this podcast almost every
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episode, politics matter because policy matters because people matter. Politics affects policy,
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policy affects people. So that is one of the ways that we care about people. But, you know, we do as
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conservative Christians, we do diverge from progressive Christians who think that activism is a form of
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sanctification, who actually believe that they're going to be able to accomplish some kind of heavenly
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utopia here on earth through their political activism. So I guess what I'm asking is what is the
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Christian biblical way to look at how we interact with these political cultural issues without idolatry,
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but also we don't want to be apathetic either? Goodness. Well, so I have a whole class I teach on
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political theology, which is dedicated to that simple question. There is so much there. Let me just kind
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of maybe scratch at the surface. One of the things I would say is we need to ask ourselves, what is the
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nature of politics? What does it mean to live in a political community? So that's a theological
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question. So government has been given in this particular age, as you said, not to bring about
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political utopia. When you look at Romans chapter 13, 1 Peter 2, and in fact I would actually go all
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the way back to Genesis chapter 9 with the Noahic Covenant, what we see fundamentally as the purpose of
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government is to exercise preservative justice. So that means government is a positive good. It's not
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something to run away from. That government is one of the instruments where fallen individuals
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are cooperating with in order to allow competing interests and often conflicted interests to
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figure out ways to peaceably live together in a fractious, fragmented moment like our own. So if we
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go back to Genesis chapter 3, because we ideally would love to have stayed in Genesis 1 and 2, but we
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didn't stay there. So Genesis 3 enters in, which means sin, decay, fallenness. We then get to Genesis
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chapter 9, which is what most scholars would look to as kind of the very beginnings of what we would
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understand as kind of the reciprocal or retributive understandings of justice. We see that God is
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concerned with maintaining the contours of this creation, and he's interested in maintaining the
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contours of this creation. One, I would say because he loves this creation. Two, he maintains the contours
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or the stage or platform of this creation because ultimately it was going to be that platform that
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would ultimately bring Christ onto the scene when we get to the New Testament. And so one of the ways
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we manage living in a fallen age is to provide governing authorities to help us work out these
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differences. You know, when we think about the nature of statecraft, Scripture doesn't really give us
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any one particular formula for what a government ought to look like. So hypothetically, monarchy,
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parliamentary systems, democratic and republican-style systems, those are all legitimate. What all
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governments are called to do is to pursue justice. And as a Christian, we would look at passages like
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Romans chapter 2, 14, and 15, which is kind of a classical passage on the teaching of the natural law
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that states that God has placed, effectively, eternity and a longing for justice inside the human
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heart. And one of the ways that we commiserate and work together in society is to pass just laws and
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then install people into power. We understand our good individuals and trustworthy who can then create
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and carry out these laws on our behalf. But I want to dwell on something that you just said that I
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thought was really important. And that's not to invest too much into politics, but at the same time,
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not then minimizing politics either. It is to understand kind of this paradoxical reality
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that in a fallen age, government is absolutely necessary. And so government is therefore obligated
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to recognize what is true about the universe, while at the same time, recognizing that there
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are limitations to what the government is actually able to bring about. I'm a Baptist. And so we have
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a strong tradition of religious liberty. And so I don't want the government meddling in kind of
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intricate matters of theology. That doesn't mean that we keep religion and politics separate. That's
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actually impossible. But it means we keep these spheres of church and state kind of jurisdictionally
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separate in order to make sure that their callings and their jurisdictions and their competencies are
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all properly borne out respective to their callings. But if we love our neighbor, one of the most very
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practical ways we're going to love our neighbor is to codify laws that seek to do good to our neighbors.
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And one of the real ironies of this particular moment that we're living in is we have a lot
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of Christians who are saying, government is bad. Don't place your trust in government. Well,
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at the same time, these Christians are the same Christians who are saying, pursue social justice,
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do good to your neighbor. And I want to say to that, yes and amen. But the problem though is,
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if you're going to actually hope to bring about justice and truth, that is necessarily a call to
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the government, not away from the government. I want to go a little deeper into the distinction
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that you just made between intermingling or allowing religion to influence law and the intermingling of
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church and state. So we're against, you know, we're for the separation of church and state. But it is
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impossible, as you said, to separate religion and politics or religion and law. I think that's a
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very important point. Can you explain more about what you mean? Sure. One of the real, I would say,
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fictions that our age kind of trades in is this idea that you can separate a person's ultimate
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values and their worldview from how they vote and how they're going to want to see those values
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lived out. And so this is really kind of, we're living in the after effects of a scholar named
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John Rawls. And John Rawls said, because we're living in this diverse society, we have to figure out
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kind of a common moral discourse that allows us to communicate with one another without automatically
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deferring to religion. And so what he said effectively was to keep religion out of it,
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you have to operate on secular terms only. Well, the problem, though, is in his attempt to
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argue for secular neutrality, you know this, Allie, what that really does is smuggle in
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secular neutrality or secularism as the real actual morality and system that's behind the debate.
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And it's not neutral at all. Absolutely. And so what secularism has done wrong is to sever
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the sacred from the public. Now, notice, I didn't say sacred and the political because there is one
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sense in which government is a secular enterprise. And a part of that means recovering a healthy
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understanding of secular. Secular in a traditional historic Christian understanding doesn't mean
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anti-religion. Rather, secular refers to only those temporal institutions that are not designed
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to be present into the eschatological age, which we would say government is one of those functions.
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So government is a secular institution, but that doesn't mean that it's cut off or immune
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from influence from individuals who have been formed and cultivated and habituated by the traditions
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that have formed them. So there's an interesting paradox here, especially as a Baptist evangelical
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Christian here, is I want religion intricately involved in the public space. I have friends who
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are legislators who are evangelical Christians. I want more of that in public office. What I would not
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want these individuals then doing is to say, well, well, then government is only there for Christians
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and government is only interpretable or intelligible exclusively on Christian grounds. And so therefore,
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if you're not a Christian, you're a second class citizen. That's not what I'm saying at all when we
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talk about secularism. Rather, it's helping us to capture what I think is the real brilliance of our
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founding is our founders understood that this apparatus of government is really just a tool
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and a vehicle. And the tool and vehicle is only as useful as the people who are using the tool are
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virtuous. And one of the ways that we get virtue from an American founding understanding is from the
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vehicle of religion. And so in a time where we're trying to say keep religion and politics separate
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from each other, I think that's completely disjunctive from what we see is actually the founding
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vision for our country. I mean, Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s, what does he say makes America unique
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from all other countries that he's been in? He says it's effectively because America is a nation with
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the soul of a church. And so rather than taking our cues and our understanding of all things from
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the government in the sense that the government does not hand down, it doesn't determine what is
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true. Government recognizes what is true. And therefore, it's incumbent upon us to put people
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into office who have that limited understanding of the government's purpose.
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And that debate gets more and more complicated as we move into, or I wouldn't say we move into,
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we are firmly in kind of this post-truth, post-modern world where we are asking, what is
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truth? You said that the function of the government is to pursue just laws. One of the ways that we
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love our neighbor is to speak truth and also to pursue policy that we know is good for them. But what
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it comes down to is, what is good? What is just? What is true? You and I believe that there is a
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God who created all of those things, that he has graciously shown us, both through general and
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special revelation, what truth is, what justice is, what goodness is, and what we can pursue.
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How do we debate these things? And maybe we don't. Maybe that's kind of what you were just saying.
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How do we debate these things from a non-strictly Christian theological perspective
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in the public square for someone who wants to be persuaded that abortion is wrong. We can list
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all of the scientific facts about fetal development. We can try to come from a humanistic,
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moral perspective. But at the end of the day, you and I believe that abortion is wrong because that
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human being is made in the image of God. And God made that human being. That human being has a soul
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and value. So at the end of the day, even as we might be able to persuade people from a secular
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perspective, the motivation behind our persuasion is that, you know, that child is made in the Imago
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Dei. So maybe my question is, should we try to separate the arguments about what is good and right
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and true from the Bible when we're in the public square? Or should we just say, look, there's a God who
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created all of this. There's a God who defines all of this. There's a God who originates justice and
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goodness. And we cannot even really have a full conversation about those things without talking
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Gosh, I love that question. And that's, again, central to the class I teach in political theology.
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One of the things I would say here is Christians would say we believe in a common morality,
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morality, but there is no such thing as a neutral morality. So by virtue of the fact that we have
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been created with reason, God instills some baseline moral foundation inside the heart of every human
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being. So there can be common morality, but there is no moral neutrality in the sense that we would say
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that truth is coming from all different directions. No, that's not what I'm saying. Truth ultimately is
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grounded in the triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, who then manifests himself and reveals
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himself in Scripture. But then as you helpfully and rightly noted, and I should say as a side note,
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Alibeth, in your writing, I've appreciated that you're talking about general revelation
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as much as you are. And this is the idea that God has communicated to us in two ways, both through
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the Bible, but then also through creation. And so individuals, when they're out in creation,
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by looking at design patterns, the law of consequence, they understand that there is
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something ultimately behind the foundations of this universe. And in a classical sense,
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we would call that being God. So special revelation and general revelation are two tools that we have at
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our disposal. But when you're thinking about kind of the practical ways of how would you actually argue
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for what Christians believe on kind of hot button cultural issues, one of the things I always say
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is it's not an either or. In many ways, how we argue is likened to what is the best golf club to use
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relative to the swing. And so really, that's a prudential issue that we have to wrestle with
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on fact specific and context specific circumstances that we find ourselves in. I often use the example
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of what would I do if I were a legislator on the floor of Congress? And there was a bill that came
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up that was a pro-life bill. I would argue that bill in several different horizons. I would argue on
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the basis that, listen, political societies need babies. Babies are good things for societies because
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we need voters, we need taxpayers. And so killing a population of individuals is wrong as a sociological
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and political matter. I would then argue probably on the grounds of natural law and a conscience issue
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that life is a basic good. And so therefore, we should never pursue any policy or law that would
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terminate innocent life. That's unlawful. It's unethical. It's at the very opposite end of what
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you would consider to be a just system of government. And then third, I would simply end my imagined floor
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speech by simply saying, you know, my fellow legislators, I come here to you today, someone who cares passionately
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about these issues, both as an American, as a human, but fundamentally as someone who is creating
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the image of God, because I believe every single human being is creating the image of God. And I learned
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that ultimately from scripture. But what I understand is that the God who has created us in his image
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has instilled within all people a longing for justice. And so what I would say is pass pro-life
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legislation, because this honors both creation, it honors humanity, but fundamentally it honors God
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and his word as well. God's glory and our good are always going to be inextricably intertwined. And so
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while it's not always a simple argument, sometimes it takes some explaining and obviously some persuading,
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it is an, or maybe I should say, it's not always an easy argument, but it is a simple argument. It is
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always pretty forthright. Now this gets a little bit more complicated when we're talking about the
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issue of sexuality, of identity, of people's relationships. One question that I think a lot
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of Christians have is how much influence should Christianity have over the law, which we've already
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been discussing. But when it comes to homosexuality, when it comes to gay marriage, which is kind of just
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a foregone conversation at this point. And even when it comes to some of the things that you have
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been talking about, cohabitation, even no-fault divorce, some of these things that we really
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don't discuss on the policy level anymore, should Christians even be thinking about this from a policy
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perspective? Is it worth having a debate anymore about the legality of gay marriage? Or should
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Christians really just try to persuade people personally when it comes to the importance of
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biblical sexuality? Where's the line that we draw today? So I think regardless of how you think about
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this in either a relational or policy bucket, first and foremost, Christians are called to be truthful
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and to bear witness to the truth. And so I think that means in whatever domain or bucket you find
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yourself in, you are obligated to speak truthfully. And you should never allow your speech to be
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blurred or suppressed or drafted into things that you believe are immoral and wrong. Now, when we think
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about gender and sexuality issues, I agree with you. It would be seemingly difficult right now to overturn
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Obergefell because the direction our culture is going is not with Christians on this issue. But you know
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what? I don't believe in the kind of progressive utopia of the right side of history and the wrong
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side of history. We might have an issue right now where a particular policy is in place for a certain
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period of time. And then later in a few decades, a couple hundred years, we might understand that
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these policies have sowed destruction for our culture. And I'm not just talking about same-sex
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marriage. I'm talking about no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce has been catastrophic on our
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culture. And then you think about just the general rise of cohabitation and just the decline of marriage
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right now in our general culture. I talk about this in my classes because it's hard to be aware of this
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if you're not studying it. But Brad Wilcox, who's a friend of mine and a sociologist at the University
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of Virginia, I think he would make the argument, based on his data, that marriage and family life
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is in about the worst state it has ever been in in American history. And what he measures that by
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is the fact that individuals are either not marrying, they're marrying at later ages, they're having fewer
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children or not having children at all. And so what we have right now is just the decline overall of
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kind of why you would enter family life in the first place. And in many ways, this is a, it's the
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inversion of the creation order, and it's an inversion of the cultural mandate that we see from Genesis
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chapter one. But, you know, when I worked at the Heritage Foundation, one of the reasons I worked on the
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marriage issue with my friend Ryan Anderson was because we understood that, excuse me, societies need
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healthy marriages because society is nothing else but the total aggregate number of families living in
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that given place, that given locality. So if you have a political community where 50% of the marriages
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are ending in divorce, you're going to have human suffering as a result. One of the statistics that we
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know is true is that the greatest indicator of childhood poverty in our country right now is
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whether or not that child is raised in a household with a married mother and father. So we're all about
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social justice in this age, right? That's the anthem and the banner that everyone is flying. Well,
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here's the thing. If you really want to pursue social justice, which means people having proper
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relationships to themselves, their family, and their social order, and to God, that means telling the truth
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about what family is and who created family, which is God. And so if you're asking me to come back full
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circle how we began this interview, why do I want to tell the truth about marriage? Because ultimately I
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love my neighbor and I cannot sit back and allow society to redefine institutions that are absolutely
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necessary to its stability and its foundation and see those institutions impaled and then be indifferent
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about them if I see individuals being denied the love and care and environment that comes with
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experiencing the differentiated love of a mother and father. And so this is a huge cultural conversation
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because you can't sever that issue from the fact that we're now living in an age where toxic masculinity
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is a thing. So these are the downplaying of gender distinctions in our society is going to wreak havoc
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on our society because at the end of the day, it blurs those categories that God has placed in creation
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for our good. I had a guest on my show a few weeks ago. Her name is Katie Faust and she has an organization
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called Them Before Us. And she's raising a lot of awareness about this issue, about how
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not just no-fault divorce, but also much of the surrogacy industry, the redefinition of marriage
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and family and gender has disproportionately hurt children. And as you said, people who say that they
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care for social justice and care for the marginalized and the oppressed very often don't realize that these
00:28:43.860
issues that have been pushed forward with really without much thought or study or discretion whatsoever
00:28:49.660
are going to affect children. So there's that practical part there that you mentioned that kids
00:28:56.060
who often grow up without a dad, they're more likely to be depressed. They have higher rates of teen
00:29:00.980
pregnancy, teen delinquency, dropping out of high school, poverty. And so there are a lot of practical,
00:29:07.740
tangible issues there that are at stake when we are encouraging divorce or incentivizing, in some cases,
00:29:14.320
single parenthood and all of that. But also there is the theological. She said a couple things that I
00:29:20.340
had never really thought about when it comes to the importance of kids having a really a right to a
00:29:27.100
mom and a dad is that you are forcing these kids to disobey the first commandment with a promise that we
00:29:35.320
are to honor our father and mother. The Bible charges us to care for the fatherless. Well, if we are
00:29:40.800
redefining the family and saying that, you know, so-called marriage without a husband or without
00:29:47.320
a dad is just as good for kids, you are forcing those kids into fatherlessness. We are forcing those
00:29:54.440
kids into a form of oppression, something that God defines as oppression. And I think, I mean, I didn't
00:30:01.580
even think about that as someone who understands the theological and practical importance of marriage.
00:30:07.160
But unfortunately, I think I see a lot of Christian conservatives thinking that the whole marriage
00:30:12.420
and family issue is a losing issue that we really shouldn't talk about anymore. Let's just talk about
00:30:19.060
capitalism. Let's just talk about small government. Let's just talk about anti-socialism, which of course,
00:30:24.140
I think all is important. But to me, it just seems like you're not going to get those issues. You're not
00:30:31.280
going to get the other conservative issues without remembering and upholding that incubator of
00:30:40.120
liberty, that foundation of the values that we hold dear. If someone doesn't realize that your
00:30:46.800
rights are inherent, they don't come from the government, that your primary caretaker are your
00:30:53.140
parents, your primary authority, and your primary disciplers are your parents,
00:30:58.020
then they do go to the culture, to politicians, to outside influencers to get those values. And
00:31:07.400
then we lose all the rest of the stuff that conservatives want to uphold. So I don't know.
00:31:11.900
I do think a lot of conservative Christians are scared to talk about these issues because they do
00:31:15.780
seem divisive and people are tired of being called bigots.
00:31:18.520
I mean, listen, everything you just said, I couldn't agree more with. You think about what are
00:31:26.580
those first things, those permanent things, issues that we have to get right. The family is one of
00:31:35.140
them. I would put family as kind of the bedrock foundation upon which the rest of society comes to
00:31:42.240
be built on top of. When we are building a foundation on sand, which is what we're now doing,
00:31:49.840
the rest of society is going to be crippled as well. And I'll just end by stating something here.
00:31:56.540
You mentioned about denying children access to a mother and a father. This is very unpopular to say,
00:32:03.620
but you all remember the video probably, or the photo of Pete Buttigieg with his spouse in a hospital
00:32:14.580
bed with their newborn children. Well, you know, it's celebrated on social media. It's getting all of
00:32:22.220
the retweets celebrating the goodness of life and family, which we want to celebrate life. Absolutely.
00:32:30.180
But you know, what's really fascinating is they took that picture inside a hospital room,
00:32:36.520
sitting on a hospital bed where there was someone conspicuously absent, which was the mother.
00:32:44.240
And so while society is applauding and celebrating that image, I saw that and thought, okay, well,
00:32:51.420
what law and public policy has now coordinated to do is to deny those children loving,
00:33:00.180
access to a mother. So we have cut out intentionally by design because of public policy,
00:33:09.200
the opportunity for those children to have a mom. That is not justice. That is a disrespect to the
00:33:20.080
creation order that God has placed in our world. And we should lament the fact that any child
00:33:28.580
is not getting the love that they are entitled to and have a right to from a mother and a father.
00:33:35.160
Yep. Justice doesn't mean whatever people want it to mean. Justice is synonymous with righteousness.
00:33:40.920
And the one righteous one who created justice tells us what that looks like. And one of the
00:33:45.560
depictions of justice that we see is at the very beginning of the Bible, the creation of the family,
00:33:50.920
not just for his glory, but also for our good. Thank you for defending that so well. I think
00:33:55.960
you've given us a lot to chew on and I think have been able to boil down very clearly the Christian
00:34:06.580
position on a lot of controversial topics as you do so well consistently. Can you tell everyone how
00:34:11.540
they can find you, how they can support you? Yeah, I would say I'm mostly on Twitter. I'm
00:34:17.540
simply Andrew T. Walk. And I've got some books on Amazon. You know, shockingly, Amazon still sells
00:34:24.580
them. We'll see how much longer that happens. I have a second edition of my book on transgenderism
00:34:29.380
coming out in February. So we'll see if I follow suit like Ryan Anderson and get my book canceled.
00:34:35.460
So we'll see what happens. Let's hope not. Well, thank you so much, Andrew. I really appreciate